


Something of You

by signofthree



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: (but really character death), Angst, Character Death, Coping, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Major Illness, Not Really Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-15
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:07:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/signofthree/pseuds/signofthree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The facts of the case are this:</p><p>One Wednesday, John Watson wakes up with a cold. One week later, he does not wake up at all. It’s the interim, of course, that makes the difference.</p><p>OR:<br/>In which John dies, but the death doesn't stick as neatly as it's supposed to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written in a frenzy this past week, but it should be read as though it was published pre season three. Much as I like Mary, she didn't have a place in this story about John and Sherlock, so I just pretended she never happened. Feel free to use your imagination to fill in the blanks.
> 
> Also, I am posting this in segments to make the monstrosity that it has grown into easier to read, but if you are coming in late and the whole thing is up, I recommend you read it as a one-shot, as that was how it was written. If I don't update at least once a week until it is all up please kick me swiftly, because this work is complete on my hard drive.

A friend who dies; it’s something of you who dies.—Gustave Flaubert

 

The ordeal will never be over with. Not really, not even when the last of the mourners straggle away from the gravesite and the cars pull away into the mist (it rains the day of the funeral, which seems fittingly cliché, though not unexpected. They are in London, after all) leaving no one but Sherlock and Mycroft, one standing close to the headstone, hands clasped tightly behind his back, the other hovering somewhere behind, inconspicuous and infuriatingly obtrusive all at once. There is nothing left to do, now, no more relatives to notify, no arrangements to be made. Nothing left but to “move on”, as everyone has told Sherlock he will eventually be able to do. Maybe that is supposed to be a comfort, but he has always been blessedly immune to useless platitudes. “Moving on” is a concept he quickly shunts to the back of his mind, to be deleted when he has the necessary concentration. For now he is thoroughly occupied with other notions.

It isn’t over with.

***

The facts of the case are this:

One Wednesday, John Watson wakes up with a cold. One week later, he does not wake up at all. It’s the interim, of course, that makes the difference.

Sherlock knew John had been feeling off for two days—had probably known it before John had, though any impressive deductions were made redundant by John’s own whinging. Apparently it was not untrue what they said about doctors making the worst patients, as John spends those first two evenings loudly clearing his throat and moaning when Sherlock refuses to abandon his experiments to duck out for paracetamol. By that Wednesday, when he awakens with a full-blown cold, complete with swollen sinuses and inflamed throat, John has become positively unbearable.

Having called in sick, John spends the morning wrapped in a blanket on the couch, clutching a cup of tea and glaring whenever Sherlock moves in between him and the telly. They don’t speak much, but Sherlock can tell he’s miffed about something (the paracetamol, perhaps? Not worth investigating), so it’s no surprise that evening, when Sherlock mutes the whatever crap program John is watching and steps swiftly in front of it, that he receives a less-than-warm welcome.

“Excuse you!” says John, gesturing to the television.

“It was the maid,” says Sherlock without glancing back, “it’s always the maid. Get dressed. We have a case.”

John groans. “Well, first off it’s a cooking program. Second, I’m not going anywhere. I’m ill.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and switches the telly off completely. “You already know how to cook,” he says, indicating the half-eaten toast and jam John dragged himself into the kitchen to make around lunchtime. “And stop whining. You’ve barely got a cold. Meanwhile, a man lays dead and his widow and children remain without an explanation. You’re telling me you’d cast off the opportunity to bring them some peace because you’ve got the sniffles?”

John groans again and throws the blanket over his head in an uncanny impression of a petulant child—or of Sherlock himself. “You’re trying to manipulate me.”

“It only counts as trying if it doesn’t work.”

There is a moment’s pause. “What do you need me for? Can’t you gallivant for one night on your own?”

Sherlock is growing restless. He checks his watch and then his phone, uncomfortably aware of the fact that their window of opportunity is closing.

“Fine,” he says, rocking back onto his heels before crossing to his chair, where his coat is draped, still smelling faintly of mold from this afternoon’s science experiment. “I don’t know why I bothered to ask. We both know how swimmingly things tend to go when I go off on my own. And besides, it’s only an abandoned chemical factory, how much can go wrong?”

John makes a noise of frustration and flings the blanket off of his head, getting to his feet with far much more noise than is necessary.

“Give me five minutes,” he grumbles, though he can’t seem to resist glowering when Sherlock claps his hands together with undisguised glee.

***

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock tenses but doesn’t turn. He’s surprised it’s taken Mycroft this long to say something. He lost track of time a good while ago, but the sound of his brother’s voice is enough to bring him back to awareness, at least enough to realize that it is growing dark, the chill in the air a little more acute. It’s something he’s good at, losing track of time. Mycroft, on the other hand, is constantly aware of the passing of the seconds. That he’s waited to speak displays more patience than Sherlock is accustomed to. But he does not respond.

“I understand that you’d prefer to stay,” Mycroft says, ignoring Sherlock’s apparent indifference. “If you’d like, I can have a car take you back here in the morning. But I really do think it’s best if we head indoors—the temperature…”

Sherlock smiles wryly, though Mycroft can’t see it.

“Why?” he says. “Afraid I’ll catch cold?”

Sherlock receives a stiff silence in return, and imagines he can hear Mycroft’s jaw snapping shut, his back going a little straighter. He considers standing there for a few more hours, just to make his brother squirm. But he quickly dismisses the idea, sighing.

“Don’t bother with the car,” he says. “I doubt he’ll be expecting me.”

“There is nothing wrong with mourning, Sherlock.”

“Not inherently, no,” says Sherlock, stuffing his hands into his pockets against the cold and chuffing his feet on the false grass still surrounding the grave. The new sod will probably be laid tomorrow, when the rain has let up. “But there’s nothing inherently beneficial, either. Take me home, Mycroft, and then do me a favor.”

Mycroft hesitates for a moment. “Anything.”

“Leave me the hell alone, will you?”

Finally Sherlock turns and gives Mycroft a sweeping glance. He is dry where Sherlock is soaked, for he had the good sense to open his umbrella when the downpour began. Sherlock reads the unfulfilled snide response threatening to escape in his stance, the tightness of his jaw, and the whisper of grief in his brow. Unjustified. He and John kept acquaintance because of Sherlock, and the dissolution of that acquaintance—through death or other means—is no reason for remorse on Mycroft’s part. They were not friends.

Sherlock stalks over to Mycroft and thrusts a hand out. Mycroft hesitates again, not because he does not understand but because he is considering. Then he takes the pack of cigarettes out of his pocket and presses one into Sherlock’s hand. Sherlock snatches it, lights it, and takes a long draw, ignoring the fact that the paper instantly becomes soggy between his lips.

“Sentiment, Mycroft,” he says, exhaling. And he leads the way to the waiting car.

***

“Well this is lovely,” says John when they arrive at the edge of the fen, their ankles already sinking into the muck before they can even begin to venture into the tall grass which edges the innumerable small pools of stagnant water that surround them. “Bit less homey than I was expecting, but I’ve heard the fens are lovely in the daylight this time of year.”

“Oh, wonderful, more griping,” says Sherlock, already charging into the muck. John had not ceased his complaints once on the way here, and though Sherlock has an inkling that many may have been justified, he had rather been hoping that they would cease once the actual work got underway. “Come on, we’re running out of time.”

John follows him into the mud, their feet squelching and sinking a little deeper with each step.

“Time to do what, exactly?” he says. He has his arms crossed over his chest as though cold, though the summer night is in fact uncomfortable warm and muggy. Swarms of insects follow them as they make their way toward the centre of the fen. “Murders have a timetable on being solved, do they?”

“You know perfectly well that they do.”

“Yeah, well,” says John, sniffing. “This looks a lot less like a factory than I was led to believe. I’d have worn different shoes.”

“You wouldn’t have come if I had told the truth.”

“Anything else you’d like to tell me now that I’m here?” says John, sounding a bit more resigned. “Don’t tell me the wife was made up as well.”

Sherlock has the decency to arrange his face into a look resembling guilt, though he’s fairly sure John can’t see it. They are at the edge of dusk, the fen almost completely obscured by darkness, but he doesn’t want to risk pulling his torch out and being spotted.

“The wife may have been an exaggeration,” he says.

“What did you exaggerate?”

“Only her existence.”

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock throws his hands up, the last of his already precarious patience slipping away.

“You wouldn’t have come!” he repeats. “I needed you to come, John, I need two pairs of eyes! Now, keep yours open for once, we’re running out of time!”

John gives a long, loud sigh and turns his head to the ground.

“Honestly, Sherlock, the fact that you think I’d only care that a man had been murdered if he had a wife and kids is frankly a little insulting.”

Sherlock keeps his eyes down and does not reply. John, so oblivious to what surrounds him, so perceptive when it comes to Sherlock, notices.

“Sherlock,” he says firmly, his voice made deeper by the rasp in his throat, “there was a murder, wasn’t there?”

“Not…as such.”

John’s mouth falls open and stops abruptly.

“Keep moving!” Sherlock is all but shouting now. “We’re running out of daylight!”

But John holds his ground. “ _What_ am I doing here, Sherlock?”

Sherlock may not be as attuned to people as John is—not even to John himself—but he has known the doctor long enough to know when he is adamant. Typically, Sherlock would argue back, because John ought to know by now that there is a reason, of course there’s a reason, and it’s always a good one, but they really are running out of time now, so for once he concedes.

“One of my homeless network tipped me off,” he says. “The new strain of meth that’s making the rounds in London, the one Lestrade won’t shut up about—he says he knows a man who buries his stash here. I’ve been trying to get my hands on some for weeks now—not to _try_ , don’t look at me like that—because if I can break down the composition I may be able to trace it back to its source. But if we don’t get moving Hairy Frank is going to be none too pleased to find us here when he comes to check his stockpile. So _come on_.”

But John does not move. Instead he presses the heels of his hands into his eyes as if by doing so he can squash the scene in front of him away.

“So you’re telling me,” he says slowly, “you dragged me, ill, into the middle of a bog so that we could steal meth from a homeless drug addict named _Hairy Frank_?

“It’s a fen,” Sherlock corrects, and then, catching John’s chastening glare, adds, “but…that’s probably not important. Just— _come on_ , if you want to leave then help me finish.”

There is no more time for objections, so Sherlock charges on, scanning the ground in the fading sunlight. After a moment, John comes trudging up behind him.

Thankfully it doesn’t take much longer to find what they’re looking for: a single flower near a large pool of stagnant water, out of place not only because it is in full bloom but also because it is made of silk—false. Sherlock sets to digging while John stands watch, but the task proves more tedious than he anticipated, because every time he scoops out a handful of muck another sloshes in to take its place. John does not help matters. He keeps his own hands tucked firmly in his armpits and turns in slow circles while the darkness slowly becomes absolute, snuffling and clearing his throat alternately and without pause.

“If you’d really like to be helpful,” Sherlock snaps after fifteen minutes of unsuccessfully sloughing through the mud, “then perhaps you could cease your mewling. It is extraordinarily distracting.”

“I am not _mewling_ ,” John says, looking down at Sherlock for the first time since they arrived. “And perhaps I would be feeling better if _someone_ had had the decency to get me some paracetamol when I asked.”

“I knew it!” Sherlock throws up an accusatory finger, flecking John’s shirt with mud. “I _knew_ you would hold that against me! And you say _I’m_ the unreasonable one—”

“It’s just _decent_ , Sherlock, when your flatmate asks—”

“The purpose of the experiment is to observe the mold in _all_ stages of growth, though I wouldn’t expect—”

They are so wrapped up in the argument that neither notices the figure rising from the mud behind them, nor the knife in his hand, glinting in the light of the warm evening’s first stars.

***

Mrs. Hudson has gone to bed by the time Sherlock arrives, dripping rainwater all over the front entrance and the stairs, though in true fashion she has left a plate of food—cold now—and a pot of tea—also cold—on the kitchen table, both of which Sherlock promptly throws away. He doesn’t turn on any lights as he moves about the apartment, stripping wet layers of clothing as he does. The coat lands on his chair, the scarf and the shirt on the couch. His belt—which will be withered and ruined by morning—takes the place of the uneaten meal on the kitchen table, along with his shoes and socks. His trousers go last, landing in a heap by the dormant fireplace. He leaves his pants, though not because they are dry (they aren’t). He does so rather because there is nowhere left to toss them that isn’t John’s chair.

Sherlock stands, mostly naked and shivering in the dark, staring down at the chair as time slips by. As at the graveyard, he doesn’t know how much passes before he decides that the chair has to go. It’s taking up space that could otherwise be put to valuable use, and besides, it’s a gaudy, ratty old thing. Now that there’s no one here to beat the dust out of it every once in a while, the chair will serve no purpose other than to aggravate his sinuses. So yes, it most definitely has to go.

He pushes it toward the stairs first, makes it all the way to the landing before he realizes that the damned thing is too heavy to lift on his own, and besides, he’s mostly nude. Not that he’s ever been modest, but he’s absolutely certain Mycroft has the place under especially stringent observation tonight, and he doesn’t care to supply his brother with any reason to come swooping in to mother him. The stairs are out, then.

Next he drags it to the window, thinking he might just throw the thing out. This will prove no less dramatic to his observers, of course, but Mycroft will be expecting him to smash things; he’s done it before. He thinks he’ll be able to lift it high enough to leverage it over the sill, but when he begins to heft it an image of the frame littered about the sidewalk, upholstery torn, stuffing spilling like brains from an open skull, he halts. For whatever stupid, emotional reason, he cannot bear the image. It will have to go upstairs. John never kept anything in his room, anyhow, there is plenty of room there. He doesn’t intend to clean the bedroom out, but at least there it will be unseen.

He hates himself with a furious fervor when he makes it to the foot of the stairs and realizes that he faces the same problem as before. The chair is too damn heavy. He hates that he cannot figure this out, this problem which manual laborers and ruddy-faced boys in moving vans solve every day, hates it so much he wants to tear his own hair out and scream until the neighbors send for the police. Again, the idea of Mycroft—and possibly Lestrade—halts him. He settles instead for kicking the chair with all his might. His big toe makes a small but satisfying pop as it breaks against the wood. It doesn’t hurt as much as he wants it to.

The problem presents no solution. He wakes up who knows how many hours later, still pondering, curled up in John’s chair. Somehow, it has returned to its usual spot beside his own.

***

Sherlock can’t help but gloat a little as they arrive back at the flat, both dripping and sullied but otherwise unharmed. He didn’t really think he’d need another excuse to get John out of the house for his more ridiculous cases, but he’ll certainly be using this one in the future—it’s just too good to pass up.

 _You have to come, John, what if another meth addict attacks me with a knife_?

Hairy Frank—who had become Muddy Frank for the purpose of guarding his stash—had of course attacked the most immediate threat to that end: the man digging through the mud searching for it. Sherlock was still crouching, half-sunk in the muck, by the time either of them spotted the scrawny, bedraggled man lunging out of the fen, and so had not had ample time to react. True to form, John had acted on his behalf and tackled Hairy Frank before he could so much as scratch Sherlock. Both had landed in the retention pool, and John had earned himself a snort of warm, murky water, but no worse: Hairy Frank had the element of surprise on his side, but not much else. In the end he was just another meth addict, scrawny and weak, and when Sherlock dragged them both out of the water a moment later the homeless man had relented, and had even offered Sherlock a—very, very—small sample of his stash in exchange for their silence.

All in all it was the best outcome they could have hoped for, but for some reason John had refused to speak to him as they rode home with the most disgruntled cab driver Sherlock had ever met, and when Sherlock tries to hint at their fortune—perhaps a bit smugly, but he is _right_ , after all—John stomps noisily to the bathroom without a word, clearly oblivious to the fact that Sherlock is just as in need of a wash as he. In fact, he doesn’t say anything to Sherlock until the next day, when he emerges from his room around noon.

Sherlock is sitting at the kitchen table, and he keeps his eyes on the half-dissected pig’s spleen on his plate as John enters, determined not to speak until he can gauge the other man’s mood. John spends a moment making a dramatic mug of coffee, turns to leave, thinks better of it, and says,

“I’m not going to get the smell of pond scum out of my nose for weeks, you know.”

Sherlock tries and fails to keep a smile off his face, his eyes determinedly still on the spleen.

“Did it clear up your sinuses?” he says.

“Oh, piss off,” says John, but the humour has returned to his voice. He walks into the living room, calling over his shoulder, “I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve saved your arse, but I think you owe me one.”

“Noted,” Sherlock murmurs.

It’s what he likes about John: the drama never lasts long.

***

Sherlock likes to think he knows a thing or two about death. He deals with it almost daily, after all, and even faked his own once. He knows what to expect in almost every deadly situation, from decay rates to bruising patterns to the best time of day for interment—but he’s wholly unprepared for this. The things that happen to the not-dead, the people left behind by the deceased. He doesn’t like being surprised, so he’s put off, to say the least, when his doorbell won’t stop ringing the day after the funeral. There is a sudden flood of casseroles and photographs and boring stories about John from people he’s never met nor had any desire to, and he hates the way every one of these people looks at him, glossing over the fact that he hasn’t changed out of his dressing gown or washed or shaven, patting him on the back and wiping tears from their eyes while searching his own for similar signs of grief, suspicious or more sympathetic when they find none. He receives them all stiffly until Mrs. Hudson comes to relieve him, patiently but firmly shuffling them out the door when she sees Sherlock’s expression go sour. He loathes each one of them. He supposes John went through it all when he “died”, but he also suspects John did not have the added inconvenience of having to move his half-decayed pig’s spleen to accommodate yet another lasagna in the fridge.

“Why are they doing this?” he shouts at Mrs. Hudson in between visitors. “They’re acting as if I was his husband rather than his flatmate!”

“Is that what you were, Sherlock dear?” she says.

It is the first time she’s asked, rather than assumed. The question immediately deflates him, and he feels the urge to kick something again, because yet again he has no answer.

“Tea, Mrs. Hudson,” he says. “Make it downstairs, will you?”

Mrs. Hudson nods, but she can’t resist placing a teary kiss on his hair before she goes.

Not long after, the doorbell rings again, and Mrs. Hudson, caught up in crying and tea-making, no doubt, fails to address it despite Sherlock’s shouts. After the third ring he flings himself out of his chair and goes to the door himself, ready to turn whichever army pal or long-lost aunt has come to seek comfort in the guise of giving it. But when he opens the door it is only Molly, red around the eyes but no longer crying, and carrying nothing but an old, unwashed mug that Sherlock immediately recognizes as John’s.

“I wanted to bring something more…something better,” says Molly, sitting on the couch a moment later. “It seems so silly, it’s just his old coffee mug. I used to make him a cup whenever you were working…Anyway, I’m sorry it’s not a bit…better.”

“No,” says Sherlock, clutching the mug in both hands and staring at the ground. “No, it’s quite…quite nice.”

A heavy silence descends.

“Oh,” says Molly, just when Sherlock is sure she’s about to leave and finds himself wishing that she wouldn’t. “Your toe.”

Sherlock is barefoot, not only because he doesn’t see the point, but also because he couldn’t imagine trying to cram the swollen, purple mess of his toe into any sort of shoe at the moment. Otherwise he’s almost forgotten about it.

“Here.” Molly reaches out, and after a moment of hesitation Sherlock proffers his foot, placing it tenderly on her knee. She probes it gently, apologizes when he hisses, and then busies herself making a cold compress in the kitchen. After a fair amount of digging she finds where John stashed the first aid kit and cobbles together a splint as well.

“You should get it set,” she says, “and take some anti-inflammatories.”

He’s glad she didn’t say paracetamol.

“Maybe,” says Sherlock.

Molly dismisses herself a few minutes later, ducking out with a murmured word of sympathy just as Mrs. Hudson comes bustling up with the tea, her makeup valiantly but obviously recently reapplied. This time she doesn’t linger.

Sherlock receives just one more visitor that day. It is Lestrade, and, with a surprising amount of composure and lack of emotion, he delivers the only gift Sherlock has been craving. A case.

***

“Have you been burning dead things again, Sherlock?”

It’s Saturday, and they haven’t had an interesting case since the meth addict, though Sherlock is still working on that one. It’s gotten to the point where he can’t do much without the resources of the police, and so he’s spent the morning deliberating over whether he wants to attempt to hack into their databases or if it’s perhaps time to let them in on what he’s uncovered so far. He’s fairly certain he knows how the meth is made, but tracking the maker is going to be trickier without a shortlist to work with.

“It’s called cooking, John,” he says, plucking idly at his violin while he is sprawled on the floor, “and you know I haven’t.”

But John continues to wander around the room, taking great sniffs of the air, brow creased. His cold has abated enough that he is able to do this, but he hasn’t yet had an appetite, and the shaking from low blood sugar is apparent to Sherlock even across the room.

“Odd,” says John. “I could swear I smell something burning. Something rotten.”

“Unlikely,” says Sherlock. “My own olfactory capacity far exceeds your own, and I can’t smell a thing.”

John turns to him, nose wrinkled.

“How do you know?”

“Hm?”

“How do you know your olfactory capacity exceeds my own?”

“Because I have trained mine,” says Sherlock. “Being able to discern between the subtlest smells is essential to my work, and the olfactory nerve must be exercised in order to stay in peak condition. Like a muscle.”

“Except it’s a nerve.”

“Don’t get smart,” says Sherlock. “Whatever it is, you’re imagining it.”

“Yeah, except—”

But Sherlock has lost patience with the conversation. He is thinking about the meth and the police and John is a distraction, and so he lifts the bow to his violin and plays an unending, screaming note until John shakes his head and retreats upstairs.

When he comes back down for dinner that evening, it is with a frown on his face.

“Still imagining smells?” Sherlock asks.

John shakes his head. “No,” he says. “Though I do feel a bit…” He trails off and shakes his head again, as though trying to rid his ears of water, then switches subjects. “Any headway with the methamphetamine?”

“None whatsoever,” Sherlock says with a scowl. “I think I might ambush Lestrade at home tomorrow. I’d rather not get Donovan involved this time, she’s been such a brat lately, and for no reason at all.”

“You mean since you revealed that you faked your own death and totally humiliated her?” says John, poking through their bare cupboards. “Can’t imagine why that would bother her.” He sighs in frustration. “We’re out.”

“Of what?”

“Everything. Care to order in?”

“I couldn’t possibly eat.”

“Pad Thai?”

“With chicken.”

He allows John to order and to pay, too distracted and frustrated and certain that he won’t be able to sleep until the pieces of the puzzle fall more neatly into place. He’s especially restless because checking police records feels too easy—like cheating. Later he’ll recall wishing for a distraction, if only for the night, and the memory will make his intestines wither.

The food arrives and Sherlock digs in without ceremony because he hasn’t eaten in thirty hours and he is human too, no matter how fervently he denies it. He only notices that John isn’t eating on his second bite, and only because John is usually the first to start and the first to finish. But he is just sitting there, staring at the carton and frowning.

“I can’t smell it,” he says, catching Sherlock’s pointed look. He flips a noodle into his mouth and continues to frown as he chews and swallows. “Can’t taste it either.”

 _Now there’s a distraction_.

Sherlock is on his feet in a moment, peering into John’s face—paler than usual, the circles under his eyes perhaps a little darker—taking his pulse—a little too rapid, but not enough to be concerning—and doesn’t heed John’s attempts to garner his attention until he slaps Sherlock’s wrist.

“Sherlock,” he says firmly. “What are you doing?”

“Anosmia,” Sherlock says.

“I’m familiar with the term. One of us is a doctor. Have you forgotten which?”

“It’s rare,” says Sherlock, unable to keep an edge of excitement out of his voice. “Perhaps you sustained head trauma when you tackled Hairy Frank? Have you been exposed to any chemicals lately?”

“Not counting the meth you’ve been tinkering with in our kitchen? Get off, Sherlock, and let me call a proper doctor.”

“I thought you were the doctor.”

“Not for _myself_. I’m not a science experiment, Sherlock. Leave it alone.”

There is more arguing, of course, but in the end John wins out, and he schedules an appointment at the clinic for the following Monday. Sherlock grumbles about it and ends up going to bed with yet another mystery floating in his head unsolved. He is so preoccupied that he fails to notice the fear in John’s voice, nor the worry that creases his forehead as he slowly walks to his own room that night.


	2. 2

It’s the meth dealer. Sherlock hasn’t thought about him since John was admitted to the hospital, but now Lestrade is confident that he knows the man’s identity, though they haven’t been able to track him down. For that they need Sherlock.

Sherlock knows that Lestrade does need him, but he also knows that Lestrade is throwing him a bone, a much needed distraction. He doesn’t think Lestrade realizes how perfect a distraction it is.

Sherlock can’t believe he didn’t think of it himself. If not for the meth dealer, he never would have taken John to the fen. If not for the fen, John would still be alive today. So he will find out where the meth dealer is and then he will kill him. Perhaps he will track Hairy Frank down and kill him too, just for good measure.

He spends the whole night after the impromptu and unwelcome wake poring over the details. Martin Les is the man’s name, and he might be the scum of the Earth but he is by no means unintelligent. A meth addict, yes, but also a PhD in chemistry and a nicely complicated network of people protecting and working for him. Maybe not so simple, then, but that makes it all the more delicious.

Maybe it’s the lack of sleep or the dizzying, unrelenting concentration he has forced himself to maintain since Lestrade handed him the case, but Sherlock isn’t particularly surprised when he turns away from his string map for a moment and finds John sitting in his old chair. Sherlock has been hearing his voice all night, chiding but distant, so in a way it makes sense.

He’s wearing the jumper Sherlock got him for Christmas and sipping innocently at a cup of tea, as though he has been waiting all night for Sherlock to turn ‘round. When he does, John raises an eyebrow.

“You’re a mess,” he says.

“And you’re dead,” says Sherlock, scowling as he brushes past John to shuffle through a stack of papers on the desk. “You shouldn’t be here.”

“Given up on shaving, have you? It doesn’t suit you. You haven’t the chin for it.”

“What did I say?” Sherlock snaps.

“Right,” says John. “Shouldn’t be here. But I don’t actually have anywhere better to be. So if it’s all the same to you, I’ll stay.”

“Suit yourself,” says Sherlock, heading back to the map.

If he ignores him, John will probably just go away.

“All right then,” says John, “it’s not as though _I_ have things to do.”

There is a crinkle, and Sherlock cannot resist glancing over his shoulder to see that John has picked up a newspaper and is thumbing through it with obvious deliberation, aware that Sherlock is watching him. Sherlock returns his attention to the map, trying to focus on the last known place Martin Les was rumored to have been seen.

“Hm,” says John. “Rain. All. Week.”

He punctuates each word with a click in the back of his throat, probably because he knows it drives Sherlock insane when he’s trying to think. Sherlock cringes each time, but still does not turn around. In response, John makes a show of crinkling the newspaper every time he turns a page, until Sherlock’s skin is positively crawling.

“Ho hum. Have you even read through the scanners this week? You haven’t circled anything. Look here, a cat’s gone missing from a family in Islington and they’re certain they closed every door and window. That sounds right up your alley.”

“I already have a case,” says Sherlock, teeth grinding.

“Good one, is it?”

“Fascinating. Now would you mind terribly shutting up?”

“You’re awfully focused for a man whose dead friend has just appeared in his living room.”

“And you’re awfully chipper for someone who’s just died. Now, if you please, _shut up_.”

“And why shouldn’t I be chipper? Like I said, I haven’t a thing to worry about. Except perhaps you. I guess some things don’t change even when you’re dead.”

“I’m _fine_ ,” says Sherlock, though he thinks if he has to say that word one more time he’ll likely choke on it.

“You look it.”

But Sherlock cannot take it anymore. “What part of shut up don’t you understand?” he shouts, finally whirling.

John doesn’t reply. By the time Sherlock has turned, he is gone, leaving nothing but a neatly folded newspaper exactly where Sherlock left it earlier.

***

Sherlock wouldn’t have noticed that John hasn’t emerged from his room all morning if he hadn’t made a break with the meth. There’s a chemical in it which gives it its potency, better than the dime-store cold medicine crap that had all but been eradicated in the UK but also a dead giveaway because it’s only available from a single company—not just in the UK, but in the entire world. John doubts they’ve been supplying the maker—too much of a reputation risk—but they have to be getting it from somewhere, and there’s only one distribution center near London. If they go, he might be able to determine how the chemical is acquired. Yet when he shouts for John and throws his coat on in a whirl, never to be deterred by the muggy weather, he receives no reply.

Frustrated, limbs stinging with the desire to _go_ , to _be there_ , Sherlock hurtles up the stairs and barges into John’s unlocked room with an appropriately impatient speech ready on his lips, where it dies as soon as he sees the state of his flatmate. John is curled under piles of blankets which he must have dragged out of the closet sometime last night because they are as out of place in this weather as Sherlock’s coat. The blankets, unlike the coat, are less likely a fashion statement. John is shivering and sweating, and he barely jumps when Sherlock flings the door open so fast it slams against the wall.

Sherlock freezes. The window is closed, and the room smells of stale sweat.

“What’s going on?” he says.

John opens his eyes and squints up at Sherlock.

“You’re the genius,” he says, “deduce it.”

“You’re ill,” says Sherlock, not moving from his place in the doorway.

“There’s our detective,” John rasps. He uncurls, turning over to lie on his back and closing his eyes again, but he continues to shiver.

“I thought you were over your cold,” he says, unable to keep a note of accusation out of his voice. The distribution center continues to niggle at him, but for some indeterminate reason this revelation has clouded his resolve.

“Not a cold,” says John. “Must be the flu. Explains the anosmia, though it’s a rare symptom…”

“How can a doctor confuse a cold with the flu?” says Sherlock, wrinkling his nose. John does not so much as frown at his accusatory sneer, which makes a little electric jolt of fear surge through Sherlock’s gut.

“Didn’t,” says John. “I must have gotten both. Sure it had nothing to do with being dunked in a pond before I’d had the chance to properly recover.”

When Sherlock doesn’t reply, John cracks a bleary eye and turns his head just enough to look.

“Oh, don’t stand there looking like a lost toddler,” he says. “You must have come up here for something.”

“The meth. I may have a lead.”

Sherlock hates this. John has been sick before (last week springs to mind), but rarely has he looked so ill, and Sherlock has always relied on John to take care of himself, being the doctor in their duo. But now John looks…very bad. The word convalescent comes to mind, and for whatever reason Sherlock hates that that is the term his brain first conjures. As though John is some invalid suffering from consumption one hundred years ago, and not a grown, otherwise healthy man with the flu.

He doesn’t know what to do. So he says, “I don’t know what to do.”

John rolls his eyes and raises his arms to massage his temples.

“Honestly, Sherlock, the fact that you have no problem wrestling a meth addict but you can’t figure out what to do when your mate is ill is…”

“Frustrating,” Sherlock offers. “I know.”

“I was going to say endearing, actually.”

Sherlock smiles and John gives a rasping laugh. “Just get me some Lemsip and maybe some sports drink. I’ve still got my appointment tomorrow, so I can get something stronger if I’m still under the weather in the morning. And some paracetamol, this time. My head is killing me.”

Sherlock, glad to have a task, nods dutifully. “Yes,” he says. “Good. All right. I’ll just…I’ll be back in a moment, shall I?”

He turns to leave.

“Hang on,” says John, “didn’t you say you had a lead? Don’t let anyone get away on my account.”

“What? Oh, that? No, I—it can wait until you’re feeling better.”

It’s true. This is not a murder; it is an ongoing drugs operation, and the evidence will be as much there tomorrow as it is today. He is still itching to go, but the discomfort he is feeling tugs at the base of his stomach every time he sees how sallow John looks. It really can wait.

Sherlock ducks out, returns half an hour later with the Lemsip and some electrolyte-enhanced sugar water. He forgets the paracetamol.

***

Sherlock had hoped John had left for good after his first dismissal, but it turns out that the hope was futile. John is there again later that evening, admonishing him for not eating dinner, and again in the morning, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding a razor. He leaves the apartment in the hope that somehow John is attached to the place and not to him (Silly of him, since John is now nothing more than a figment of his imagination) and runs into him at the sandwich shop. John slides into the seat across from him as easily as if he had been told to meet there for lunch and Sherlock nearly hurls his teacup across the room before he remembers that there are people watching him here, some of them probably Mycroft’s. So he returns to the flat, where at least he can throw things without fear of institutionalization.

“You are by far the most inconvenient hallucination I have ever had,” says Sherlock. He has not spoken to John all day, but finally he is too distracted to work, and they have been sitting in their respective chairs for nearly an hour of silence, Sherlock brooding, John sipping a cup of tea that seems to have appeared out of nowhere.

“This from the man who once tried to leap out a window at Oxford, convinced he was a blue heron,” says John.

“I never told you that.”

“Mycroft did. What was the drug of choice then? LSD?”

“I’m not on LSD now,” says Sherlock, feeling fairly confident that he is not.

“I’m not a hallucination.”

“Oh please,” says Sherlock. “I am not going to call you a ghost. I don’t subscribe to the pseudoscience of the paranormal, as you well know.”

“Why label it?” says John, shrugging. “Why does it matter what I am?”

“Because what you are is dead,” says Sherlock. He sighs heavily and sinks low in the chair, slinging his legs over one of the armrests. “Out with it then. What do I have to do to get you to go away?”

John tilts his head, curious. “Is that what you want me to do?”

Sherlock growls lowly, because he _does not have an answer_ , and he is so, so sick of it.

“What do you _want_ , John? I’m _busy_ , and you are distracting me.”

“From killing Martin Les? You know it’s not his fault, Sherlock.”

“Fine,” says Sherlock, because he thinks concession might shut John up, as it sometimes did when he was alive. “But he’s still not a very good person.”

“Not a good reason for you to kill him.”

Sherlock steeples his fingers under his chin and stares at the ceiling for a long moment before replying. His voice is a little quieter when he does, almost gentle.

“Why are you here, John?”

“I’m worried about you,” says John without hesitation.

“I did fine before you. I did fine when I was tracking Moriarty’s network. I think I’ve proven myself functional.”

“I’m worried you blame yourself.”

Sherlock presses his lips together and does not reply.

John lets out a long, slow breath before he pushes himself to his feet and takes a step to cover the gap between their chairs. Much to Sherlock’s surprise and displeasure, John claps a very warm hand on his shoulder.

“Sherlock, my friend,” he says, “you really need a shave.”

And he walks off, up the stairs to John’s old room, as though nothing has happened, as though he has not just left a prickling sensation on Sherlock’s shoulder where his very unreal hand made contact, and, for some reason, behind Sherlock’s eyes as well.

***

John is not better by the morning. He looks, in fact, worse by the time Sherlock peers in to check on him, his face gaunt and pale, the red around his eyes vivid even though his face is scrunched in obvious pain.

“Head,” he says when Sherlock takes a tentative step into the room, as though in reply to Sherlock’s wondering look, even though he can’t see it. “Jesus, I haven’t had a headache like this since…” He trails off.

“I can have Mycroft send a car to take you to the doctor,” says Sherlock. This is as close to showing concern as he is willing to come, and he hopes John catches it, because most days Sherlock would rather climb into a crate of feral cats than ring Mycroft. He hesitates, then adds, “I would go with you, but…”

John cracks an eye just long enough to look Sherlock up and down, then snaps it shut.

“You’re dressed early.”

“It’s Lestrade,” Sherlock says. “He’s caught up on the meth, asked me to meet him at the distribution center. I was hoping to be ahead of the police on this, I’ve grown too accustomed to their shoddy investigational skills.”

John waves a hand and goes back to lying stiffly in the bed, face scrunched in pain.

“Go,” he says, “and don’t worry about the car, I’ll take a cab.”

Sherlock nods curtly and makes to leave. He pauses at the door to cast a glance over his shoulder, almost says something, and decides better of it. The crime scene beckons.

Four hours later, however, Sherlock is seething, hoarse from shouting, and ready to tear into John, regardless of how ill he is. Lestrade has already sat on the receiving end of his wrath, resulting in an unceremonious dismissal from the distribution center, but Sherlock was _right_ , and Lestrade knew it.

The police—the idiotic, bumbling, simpletons who made up London’s police force—had already been there by the time Sherlock arrived. There, outside of the center, lights flashing, rolling yellow tape out over everything in sight.

“Are you all morons, or were you just specially selected for this particular crime scene?” Sherlock had bellowed as soon as he arrived.

“It’s _procedure_ , Sherlock,” Lestrade had said, trying to herd him away from the bemused and rapidly angering faces of his officers. “We found evidence—”

“Well it doesn’t matter now, does it?” Sherlock shouted. “You think the kingpin doesn’t have eyes on this place? Wherever that evidence was going to lead us will already have been cleared out if anyone involved has half an ounce of sense, which is more than I can say for any of your lot!”

There had been more arguing, of course, but it was halfhearted and sheepish on Lestrade’s part because he knew Sherlock was right. Their one lead was down the drain because the police couldn’t be bothered with a bit of discretion.

Correction: their one lead was down the drain because John Watson had fallen inconveniently ill. If they had gone yesterday, when Sherlock wanted, they wouldn’t have run into this problem.

Sherlock slams into the hallway at 221B some time later, unsure whether he is going to shut John out for a few days or if he is going to curse at him the moment he sees him. He generally doesn’t know, in these situations, not until he arrives in the throes of the thing, and so he isn’t particularly worried about which will happen. He is running on anger and frustration, and as a result he almost doesn’t see Mrs. Hudson when, upon his loud entrance, she bursts into the hallway with a rolling pin in her hand.

“Were you going to attack me?” he says, reading into her stance and her white-knuckled hold on the pin and scowling. “Perhaps your niece is right about putting you in the home, Mrs. Hudson, if you can’t even remember that I _live here_.”

There is more vehemence behind it than he really intends, but he doesn’t care much at the moment. Mrs. Hudson, far from being offended, presses a hand to her heart.

“Sherlock!” she says, breathless. “Goodness! I didn’t realize you’d gone out, I thought you must be a burglar.”

“As I said—”

“Has John got company then?” says Mrs. Hudson, fanning herself comically and ineffectively with the rolling pin and ignoring his grimace. Sherlock wants to be yelling, maybe throwing things, not standing halfway up the stairs chatting with the landlady. But he pauses.

“Company?”

He scans the entrance for signs that someone other than himself has crossed the foyer today, finds none. In fact, it doesn’t even look as though John has gone out, which is odd, because he should have had his doctor’s appointment by now.

“Of course he hasn’t had company,” Sherlock snaps. “Who would want to visit _him_?”

Mrs. Hudson shrugs innocently. “Well, I don’t know about that. Only I thought I heard you two having a bit of a row, that’s why I thought you were in. Perhaps he’s arguing with his mobile?”

“Arguing—?”

But then Sherlock hears it. Just above, behind closed doors, there is the sound of someone—John—shouting heatedly. Mrs. Hudson points to the ceiling with a look that says “see?” and nods once, as though confirming an unspoken agreement.

“I’ll just make you two a nice pot of tea, shall I?”

She disappears.

Sherlock proceeds more slowly up the rest of the stairs, curiosity edging out anger—for now—and pauses at the threshold to hear what John is saying.

“—going to kill you when he sees you, and the better for it. Stop laughing! _Stop it_! If you think he won’t know, you’ll—”

His voice becomes muffled, as if he has wandered into another room. Sherlock’s first theory—that he was talking to Harry—flies out the window, because from the sound of things John is shouting at someone in the room, someone he does not think Sherlock will want to see. Sherlock hesitates no longer; he pushes into the flat and strides into the living room to find—

Nothing. There is no one there, not even John, not until he comes striding out of the hallway brandishing, of all ridiculous things, a safety razor, held aloft as though it is a sword.

Sherlock immediately knows that something is wrong with John. Very, very wrong. He is dressed in just his bathrobe, with pants and a thin white t-shirt underneath, both soaked almost to transparency with sweat. John’s eyes are wide and unfocused, his pupils far too large, and he is trembling from head to foot. Sherlock can’t recall ever seeing anyone look so pale, least of all John.

John, for his part, halts as soon as he sees Sherlock.

“Sherlock!” he says. “There you are! I thought you were never going to come back.” Before Sherlock can reply, John turns to the corner by the window and says to no one, “I told you he’d be here, you smarmy bastard, so get that stupid grin off your face and get on your feet!”

Sherlock’s stomach drops to the soles of his feet. All traces of anger are immediately wiped away, replaced by a fear so acute it is almost blinding. There is no one in the corner.

A thousand possibilities rise to his mind at once and are just as quickly catalogued in order of likelihood. _Fever delusions. Poison. Head injury_. None of the top answers are any less urgent than the others, and so he reaches for his mobile before he says anything to John.

“Sherlock?” says John. “Why are you just standing there? He’s _laughing_ at us, Sherlock! I tried to ring, but look!” He pulls his own mobile out of the pocket of his bathrobe and shakes it at Sherlock. “Dead. Of course. Oh, good, you’ve got yours. Call Lestrade, tell him to send everyone.”

Without taking his eyes off of John, Sherlock dials and presses the phone to his ear. When a voice answers, far-off and tinny, he says, “Yes, I need an ambulance at 221B Baker Street, as fast as possible.”

He hangs up and tucks the phone into his pocket while John blinks at him.

“What are you doing?” says John. “Why aren’t you stopping him?”

“Stopping who?” says Sherlock, glancing into the corner. It remains empty.

“ _Moriarty_. He’s right there, he says he’s come to kill you!”

Sherlock’s chest goes cold, but he retains himself enough to hold a hand out toward John in a gesture which says _please do not lose your head any more than you already have_ and begins to move slowly toward him.

“Moriarty isn’t here, John,” he says, “he’s dead.”

John gives a humorless laugh. “Yeah, but so are you.”

“I faked mine, John. Come here, you need to sit down.”

“See!” John shouts, pointing at the corner. “Did you hear that? He’s right though, isn’t he? If you could fake it, why couldn’t he?”

“Because even Moriarty couldn’t fake a bullet to the skull. John, you need to sit down.”

John blinks, frowning. “Sherlock?” he says. “What’s wrong? You look ill.”

Sherlock, baffled, decides to run with it. “Yes,” he says, “yes, John, I am feeling peaky. Perhaps we should sit down?”

“Yes, all right,” says John, “but if you’ve gone and gotten yourself ill from one of your molds, I am throwing every last bit of it out, Sherlock.”

John stomps over to the couch and sits, the invisible Moriarty apparently forgotten. As soon as he does it is as if the spell has been broken. He slumps forward with a groan, his head in his hands, and begins shaking even more violently.

Sherlock is kneeling in front of him in an instant, grabbing his wrist to check his pulse and Jesus, John is burning up, his skin like a windowpane on a hot summer day. His pulse is thready and erratic, and he moans when Sherlock takes his chin in his hand to lift his head so he can peer into his eyes.

“Jesus, my head,” he mumbles. “Aren’t you supposed to be at a crime scene?”

“That was hours ago, you imbecile. Didn’t you see the doctor?”

John shakes his head and groans again, lifting a hand to massage his neck as though it is stiff.

“Couldn’t make it,” he says. “Tried to call, but I forgot to charge the mobile last night…God, I feel bloody awful.”

He tilts to put his head back in his hands and almost pitches to the floor but for the fact that Sherlock is there to catch him, lift him back to the couch, and, not knowing what else to do, leverage his own body so his legs are underneath John’s head as the latter reclines on the cushions.

They sit in silence for a moment, John’s eyes closed, his breaths uneven and shallow. Sherlock, comfortable with a gun pressed to his temple, is at an utter loss at what to do here. When Mrs. Hudson appears a moment later with a platter of tea, he waves her away with a hiss to go open the doors for the paramedics and then rests his cool hand on John’s forehead.

“Sherlock?” John mumbles.

“Yes?” Sherlock tries not to sound too panicked, too eager.

“I think I need to go to the hospital.”

Sherlock has nothing to say to this, so he pets John’s hair awkwardly and reaches out so that he can keep track of John’s pulse even as he slips further toward unconsciousness.

It’s such a boring, pointless thing for him to say that later Sherlock won’t be able to believe those were the last words John Watson ever spoke to him as a living being.

***


	3. 3

Sherlock is getting nowhere with the Martin Les case, so, with nothing else for it, he distributes the man’s picture to his homeless network and sits back to wait. The waiting is the worst; worse than when John was alive, because at least then he was able to find other distractions. Now he has nothing—no case, no experiments—nothing, except for the dead man in his living room.

Here is what Sherlock has observed about John:

First: He always wears the same sweater, the lumpy red and green one Sherlock got for him last Christmas, half out of spite, because John had always been relentless in berating Sherlock for his lack of Christmas spirit, whatever that meant.

Second: Whenever he is sitting down he is always drinking tea, and Sherlock has concluded that the tea is imaginary as well, because he cannot smell it.

Third: He smiles whenever Sherlock looks at him, no matter how virulent Sherlock’s own expression. This last observation is the most painful, and the main reason he avoids looking whenever possible.

Conclusion: This John is a figment of Sherlock’s imagination, an amalgam of the things he wishes most that John still were. Alive, relaxed, spirited. Happy to see him.

But fake.

“I haven’t got time for a psychological breakdown,” he informs John one morning. “I have a case.”

“There’s always a case,” says John, not looking up from his newspaper, “and you’re always mental. Perhaps it’s time you learned to deal with both simultaneously.”

Sherlock thinks his imagination should have made John less of a git.

He makes a show of stomping around the flat for a while, reorganizing stacks of papers and checking his phone to see if any of his network has tried to contact him. They haven’t, but Mycroft has been more insistent in the past few days, always trying to coordinate meetings despite Sherlock’s request at the graveyard. He figures he has maybe one more day before Mycroft just shows up on his doorstep, but he is determined to ignore him until that moment comes, and perhaps beyond it.

John still does not look up. Sherlock, frustrated that none of his displays have caused John to so much as twitch (he was not nearly so patient in life as he is in death), finally throws a stack of files down and says, “Are you just going to sit there for the rest of my life?”

“Or the rest of my death,” says John, folding the paper and looking clearly pleased with himself for the quip. “Haven’t decided yet. Though I wouldn’t object to some fresh air. You haven’t been out of the flat in”—he checks the date on his watch—“four days.”

“No reason to go anywhere until I have the information I need. Everything else is distraction.”

“Well, I’d try to be more persuasive, but I have an inkling that someone else is about to do the persuading for me.”

“What’re you—?”

But before he can finish, Sherlock’s phone beeps. Sherlock snatches it and looks away from John’s satisfied smirk to see that he has one new message, from Lestrade this time.

_Homicide a few blocks from you. Victim found at the top of a tree. Interested? GL_

“Oh, stop looking so pleased with yourself,” he says as John grins. “ _You_ don’t know anything that I don’t know. I knew Lestrade was going to text soon, he’s bound to want an update on Martin Les. And as you are a figment of my imagination, it follows that you would have the same suspicions as I do. Ergo, your prediction is not as impressive as you seem to think it is.”

“It’s not about Martin Les, though, is it?” says John.

Sherlock doesn’t reply, as he is already marching down the hallway to get dressed.

“Are you going to shave before we go?” John shouts after him.

Ten minutes later Sherlock, unshaven, is gliding down the road in the light mist, John clipping along at his heels.

Sherlock can feel the eyes of every officer on him as he ducks under the yellow tape which cordons off almost the entire block where the body was found, but he ignores them, heading straight for Lestrade. Donovan is there with him, but she excuses herself without comment as soon as Sherlock approaches, though she does grimace a little at the sight of him. She has reduced her venom somewhat since John’s death, but he suspects she won’t be able to hold back much longer. He is looking forward to the day she snaps. These unspoken rules of mourning are so tedious.

“Sherlock,” says Lestrade, looking him up and down, eyes sweeping over John without pausing, “you look…bad.”

“Told you the beard didn’t suit you,” says John.

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “When I want fashion advice I think I’ll consult someone who doesn’t have two-day-old mustard stains on his bargain-brand trousers, Lestrade. Tell me about the case.”

“Right,” says Lestrade, though he can’t contain one last concerned glance before turning to the tree. “Well, as you can see, we have a body in a tree.”

Sherlock looks up. There is indeed a body in the tree, one of those which lines the sidewalk, and it is naked and stiff and blue—a woman, or what is left of her.

“Glad to see you’ve gotten one thing right,” says Sherlock. “Cause of death?”

“Well, we won’t be able to tell until we get her down—“

“Exsanguination,” says John.

“Exsanguination,” Sherlock repeats, whipping out his magnifying glass and circling the base of the tree.

“How can you tell? There’s not a drop of blood anywhere, we’ve checked.”

Sherlock hesitates, because he hasn’t gotten that far yet (never repeat the dead man until you know what he’s talking about), but before he has to reply, John fills in the blanks.

“Her pallor. She’s white as a sheet. Too white—like she’s been drained.”

“Her pallor,” Sherlock says. “She’s white as a sheet. Though I’m sure you could do without the cliché.”

John shrugs.

“So where’s all the blood?” says Lestrade.

“That is the question of the day,” says Sherlock, cataloguing. No unusual footprints, no signs of heavy machinery… “That, and how she got into the tree.”

“Thrown out a window? Nearest building isn’t far.”

“And I’m guessing you didn’t ace geometry in school. The angle is all wrong. No, we’re looking for a pulley or a”—he squints up at the body—“method of dropping the body, though she doesn’t seem to have any post-mortem fractures.”

“Right.” Lestrade spends a moment scribbling in his notebook and then—

Sherlock sees it in the tilt of Lestrade’s body before it happens, but there is no time for escape, no time to do anything more than tense his shoulders as Lestrade leans toward him, his voice dropping.

“Listen, Sherlock,” he says, “I’ve been meaning to ask…how are you? How are you holding up, I mean?”

“Oh, God, not you too,” says Sherlock. He has just lost the last acquaintance who has not been handling him like a Faberge egg. “ _I’m fine_ , how many times do I have to say it?”

“It’s just—well to be frank, Sherlock, you don’t look very well.”

“He’s right,” says John, “worse than usual.”

“Shut up,” Sherlock snaps, raising a hand in an invisible barrier between himself and John.

“I’m just trying to help, mate,” Lestrade says.

“You do need to talk to someone, Sherlock,” says John.

“I’m talking to _you_ , aren’t I? Not that I want to be.”

“That’s the thing, Sherlock, you aren’t talking,” says Lestrade, mistaking Sherlock as addressing him. “You’re not talking to anyone. I’ve spoken to Molly, to Mrs. Hudson, to Mycroft even—”

“Mycroft!” Sherlock hisses. “What business do you have talking to him?”

“He called _me_ Sherlock. He’s concerned about you. No one’s heard more than two words from you since just after the funeral.”

“Someone has,” Sherlock says.

“Yeah, well, we’re worried that you’re not…coping.”

John is standing behind Sherlock now, his face an inscrutable mix of expressions, but for once the subtle smile is not among them. His brow is creased with half a dozen lines, and for the first time since his death he looks old.

Sherlock looks away from John and sees that Lestrade is frowning at him too. He glances over his shoulder as if searching for something, and Sherlock realizes too late that he has been staring at John.

He snaps the magnifying glass shut, bringing Lestrade’s focus back to him.

“Take photos,” he says. “Photos of everything, lots of photos. Send them to my phone. I’ll meet the body at the morgue.”

He strides off, and even manages to climb into a cab before John can follow him. But of course he finds John waiting at the morgue.

***

Sherlock has to follow the ambulance in a cab, because they don’t actually let non-relatives in the buses for insurance reasons, no matter how nasty the names said non-relative calls them happen to be. He informs the paramedics that John is at higher risk for poisoning than most people—repeatedly, because he can practically feel them resisting the urge to roll their eyes—and then spends the rest of the ride over sorting through his mind palace for whatever John has been dosed with.

The doctors, at the very least, have the decency to listen to him, and a toxicology report is ordered (the boring way of finding out, but Sherlock has grown no closer to the answer in his brief ride to A&E).

When that comes back negative, the doctors spend the next four hours frantically trying to bring his fever down, and Sherlock spends the same amount of time researching every new symptom as it is reported to him by the doctors, who have been given permission by John.

Was he vomiting at home? No? Add it to the list.

How severe was his headache? Was the pain blinding? No? Make a note of that.

Whatever it is seems to be affecting his autonomic nervous system, Mr. Holmes, has he ever mentioned…?

He’s just had a seizure, Mr. Holmes, we’re going to have to quarantine…

Rapid progression of symptoms, Mr. Holmes, but we don’t know what’s causing…

No answers, though, never any answers, not from the doctors and not from Sherlock. His frustration mounts with each report, until he is ready to tear his hair out or tear the hospital down because none of it makes any sense.

He was fine four days ago. He was fine four days ago. _Fine_.

It isn’t until early morning that someone starts asking the right questions, questions Sherlock himself did not think of, because an attack by a foe was the only plausible explanation.

The asker is a new doctor, a woman who has just started her shift and already looks haggard, the remnants of her breakfast—French toast—still stuck to the corners of her mouth, the scent of last night’s one-night stand hanging all around her.

“Mr. Holmes,” she says, speaking as though she has been addressing him all night and is not actually meeting him for the first time. “Doctor Welton. This might be a long shot, but has John been in any stagnant water lately? Within the last week, perhaps?”

Sherlock’s stomach clenches. _The fen_.

“He…fell in a fen on Wednesday,” he says.

Dr. Welton’s expression does not change an inkling, but she cannot hide the fact that her face goes three shades whiter the moment he says it.

“Right,” she says. “All right. I’ll have to check on something, Mr. Holmes, and get back to you in a while.”

And she jogs off.

Sherlock wants to run after her, but he cannot. He remains standing, absolutely frozen, combing through the already tired annals of his mind because he missed something. He missed something about the fen, and now that something could be killing John. The meth? The homeless addict? But none of his searches yield any results.

At last he has no choice but to relent. He sits in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the waiting room, pulls out his phone, and Googles it.

It takes not a moment to find why the doctor went pale at the mention of the fen, not a moment to understand why he did not think of this, not a moment for Sherlock’s entire world to crumble around him as neatly as though someone has put a wrecking ball to it.

John is already dead.

***

“It was a stupid way to die,” Sherlock says.

They are sitting in the laboratory outside of the morgue, waiting while Molly finishes intake on the body. John is perched on the edge of his stool, cross-legged and sipping coffee from the mug Molly gave Sherlock the day after the funeral, though Sherlock knows for a fact that the same mug is currently holding its place as a hard lump under his pillow at home.

John looks up carefully, and Sherlock is sure they are both aware that this is the first time he has willingly broached the subject of John’s death beyond pointing out that John is, in fact, still dead. John regards him for a moment, as though Sherlock is a skittish dog, likely to bite or flee if approached too swiftly.

“How so?” he says.

“Really?” says Sherlock. “You, John Watson, army doctor and veteran of all sorts of violent crime, felled by a parasite? It’s pathetic.”

He’s looking to get a rise out of John, but John merely chuckles. “Pathetic?” he says. “Sherlock, people get murdered every day. Do you know how many people have died of amoebic meningitis? Three hundred. Ever. That’s loads more exciting than getting stabbed in the throat or…shot by some crackhead. And you of all people should think so. I even had you stumped, didn’t I?”

Sherlock looks at his hands, and John frowns.

“Oh—Sherlock. Oh, I didn’t mean—look, I shouldn’t have…Damn.”

John looks at Sherlock, pleading with him, but Sherlock can already feel the walls springing up, and even if he wanted to he would be powerless to stop them. John knows it too, but still he leans forward, reaching for Sherlock’s knee.

“This is what I’ve been wanting to tell you, Sherlock,” he says, his voice urgent for the first time since his appearance, as though he is afraid he won’t get another chance.

But before he can tell Sherlock whatever it is he wants to tell, the door to the lab opens and Molly slips in. Sherlock springs to his feet, leaving John’s hand hovering in the space inches away from the place his knee just vacated.

“Molly,” says Sherlock, and he allows her to lead him into the morgue, John not far behind.

“You were right about the exsanguination,” says Molly, leading him over to the woman’s body. “I don’t think she’s got a drop of blood left in her.”

Sherlock has never been so grateful for an interesting detail, and that is saying something. He leans over the body without a word and begins his examination. He quickly finds the small hole over the jugular, and is just beginning to get excited about the case—they would have had to have hung her upside down to have drained her so thoroughly, but why?—when he realizes that Molly is hovering nearby, twisting her fingers, everything in her stance speaking to the fact that she is working up her courage to say something. When he can stand her nervousness no longer, he says,

“Out with it, Molly, before we both keel over from anticipation.”

“What?” says Molly. “No, I just wanted to say…well, you really called it with the exsanguination, didn’t you?”

“ _I_ did,” says John.

“One and the same,” says Sherlock.

“What?” says Molly.

“Nothing. D’you mind stepping back? You’re in my light.”

He and Molly have been on almost friendly terms since his return from the dead—as friendly as Sherlock can get, anyway—and despite the fact that she looks like she is trying to decide whether to walk on broken glass in bare feet, he really does not want to lose that…companionability.

Molly steps back and says, “No.”

Sherlock raises an eyebrow at her.

“No, I don’t mean no as in I won’t…give you your light, I mean…” She takes a deep breath, steeling herself. “That wasn’t what I wanted to say. I think we should talk about John.”

Sherlock clenches.

“God bless you, Molly Hooper,” says John.

Sherlock can see why he’s pleased. Molly has him cornered; it’s the most interesting case he’s seen in weeks, and if he leaves now he risks missing evidence or hindering his own progress. He’s trapped.

But at the same time, something has gone out of him, has been trickling away since this morning—maybe even since John first appeared in his living room after the funeral. He turns around to find Molly with her chest puffed out, her hands trembling in fists at her sides, ready for a fight. But the fight is gone.

“Molly,” he says, “I know you mean well. But please. I can’t. Not now.”

Molly instantly deflates, but just because she has not been met with the fight she was expecting does not mean she is backing down.

“I don’t want to push you,” she says, “except you look…well, Sherlock, you don’t look well at all. I’ve spoken to Mrs. Hudson, she says she doesn’t think you’re sleeping, says she hears you talking to yourself—”

“Oh, God,” says Sherlock, because if Mrs. Hudson has noticed then it is guaranteed Mycroft knows. “Why can’t everyone just leave it alone?”

He shoots a quick glare at John, fast enough he is sure Molly won’t notice. But John’s face is now serious, impassive.

“Because we care about you,” says Molly. “And because you don’t have to go through this alone.”

“Has it occurred to you that perhaps I _want_ to do this alone?” says Sherlock, whirling back to the body.

“John did.”

Sherlock freezes.

“When you were—when you were gone, at first, he just wanted to be left alone. He moved out of your flat, didn’t speak to anyone…Mostly everyone gave him that, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t stand it, I just felt so guilty. I tracked him down. I wasn’t going to tell him or anything, I just had to know he was all right. And he told me…”

She trails off, and Sherlock turns in time to see her bite her lip.

“Well, he made me promise not to say anything. I think he was a bit embarrassed, and I don’t think I should break that promise even now.”

“It _was_ embarrassing,” says John. “I told her I didn’t want anyone to see me just then because I didn’t feel whole anymore. So much for denying the rumors, eh?”

Sherlock frowns, because this is new information, not something John would know because he knows it. His stomach grows hot with shame, because then the only explanation is that this is what he _hopes_ John said. It’s not a thought that’s foreign to him. When he was abroad, sometimes, when the nights would stretch on or the tedium of pretending to be someone else became almost unbearable, he would lie awake and try not to think about how much he wished John was there, pretending alongside him. _Unwhole_ was never a word he allowed himself to think but…yes, now that John has said it the descriptor seems appropriate. How strange that he could go so long and not know that he was missing some piece of himself until it flickered briefly in and then out of his life.

Molly is looking at him as if she expects him to press the issue. It is what he would normally do, never one to be satisfied without the answer. He realizes that if he asked, she would probably tell him exactly what John said, but he also realizes that he couldn’t bear it if the answer was something other than his John has proffered.

So instead he stares at her, blank.

Molly, seeing that he will get no response, takes a tentative step toward him.

“I don’t think anyone can really understand what you’ve lost, Sherlock,” she says. “Not me, not Mycroft…The way you two were together, it was so brilliant.” Her eyes light up as they catch on whatever memory she has conjured, and a little laugh enters her voice. “When he first started coming along with you I was so jealous, because I thought he had to be…” She clears her throat, but the laughter doesn’t totally leave her voice. “It was just very clear the connection you had. The two of you—you were soulmates.”

John throws his hands up in mock exasperation, but he is smiling in much the same way as Molly, amused and a little sad.

“We weren’t together, Molly,” says Sherlock softly.

“No, I know, I didn’t mean—not in a sex way,” she says. “Not that there would be anything wrong if it was, but…And I know maybe you don’t believe in the whole spiritual aspect, but…you two fit. In a weird, unexpected way, you fit better than anyone else I’ve ever known. Whatever you were, it was special. And…I just don’t think you should let something like that peter out. You need to talk about it, or it’ll tear you apart.”

 _I’m already torn apart_.

Sherlock clears his throat and shakes his head.

“The body, Molly,” he says. “Let’s focus on the freshly dead.”

“Does she deserve peace more than you do?” says John as Molly, resigned, sets about taking notes.

Sherlock does not care to reply.

***

They start him on a broad spectrum of antimicrobials in a desperate attempt to fight the parasite that is gnawing away at John’s medulla oblongata, but everyone knows it is a futile gesture. Even when the amoeba is caught in its earliest stages, the chances of survival are so slight as to be negligible.

“Three percent,” he spits when the _so sorry this happened_ brigade inevitably streams into the waiting room, having been called by Mrs. Hudson, telling him that John is strong, that he might pull through. “That’s approximately nine people who have survived this, ever.”

_And even then they probably won’t ever be the same, their nervous systems ravaged, their lives irrevocably worsened, shortened._

Lestrade is there, and Molly, and Mike, and a few people Sherlock has no names for. He doesn’t care about any of them, and barely bothers to sneer when Harry shows up, drunk and crying, not even when she is escorted out when she starts shouting words of blame at Sherlock.

It’s late Tuesday morning when the diagnosis is made official, but no one is allowed in to see him that day, his condition deemed too unstable. He is not coherent, the doctors report; his fever is not under control. They come to Sherlock and ask his permission to do this or that, which initially surprises him, because he was not aware that John had made him his proxy. But John was always slipping papers under his nose for him to sign, waiting until he was too distracted to waste time arguing.

“I could have you sign a marriage certificate and you wouldn’t know it until we were in the retirement home,” John joked once.

Sherlock had made some dismissive comment about the nature of their relationship, and had continued not to look at what he was signing.

As far as he knows he is not married to John, but it seems, suddenly, that he is in charge of his medical decisions.

By late Tuesday evening, the regimen of drugs they are pouring into John’s system have proven so volatile that they cannot justify keeping him awake while invaders, natural and chemical, ruin his body. They come to Sherlock for permission to put him into a medically induced coma, and to put a tube down his throat. His respiratory system is starting to fail.

Sherlock, who by now has read every piece of literature available online about the disease, recognizes this as an indication of the end stages. He signs what he needs to sign with a vague, painful thought that at least John should be comfortable when he dies, and then asks, “Can I see him?”

The quarantine has been lifted, because amoebic meningitis is not contagious between humans. Dr. Weston, who made the initial diagnosis, leads Sherlock into his room, whispering about the machines (redundant; Sherlock knows their functions) and the disease (also redundant).

“It’s moving faster than we might expect to see,” she says, pausing outside of the room, “especially considering he’s an adult…Not that there’s much we can do once the symptoms set in, but typically, unless the patient is immune compromised or very young or old, you might get a few good days before…”

“He had a cold,” says Sherlock.

Dr. Walton gives him a sympathetic look. “I doubt that would have done it, Mr. Holmes. Sometimes you just can’t predict the way things are going to turn out.”

John looks horrifying. The machines shrink him to infinitesimally small proportions. He is pale and gaunt, his character reduced to the clicks and whirs and beeps and drips of the equipment working to keep him alive. It is failing.

Sherlock stays for just a second, just long enough to take it in, and then he flees, flees the room, flees the hospital, flees all the way back to the flat, where he closes himself in his room and sheds his stale, sweat-stained clothing. It is the only place in the flat that does not smell of John.

***

When Sherlock slides back into consciousness, it is to the sound of a grating, keening wail that he cannot immediately place. He is freezing cold and shaking all over: the reason for this becomes clear quickly. He is lying curled on the floor in front of the open fridge, the air around him so cold the door must have been left open for at least half an hour. It takes him a moment longer to realize that the sound is coming from him. He is sobbing.

There is a vague memory of leaving the morgue, of taking a silent cab home with John, of stumbling into the flat and struggling out of his coat because suddenly it is suffocating him, of opening the fridge and seeing that the casseroles are beginning to grow a thin sheet of mold and then nothing.

He cannot stop. He continues to take deep, gasping breaths, choking on each one. There are no tears now, but his cheeks are wet, so maybe he has run out. He can tell he is not getting enough oxygen, white lights popping in his vision. Panic attack? But this does not feel like panic.

And then there are hands on him, arms wrapping around his shoulders and lifting him, guiding him away from the cold light of the fridge and to the kitchen table.

“I’m sorry,” Sherlock gasps. “I’m so, so sorry.”

He thinks John is kneeling in front of him, but he can’t be certain because he is half-blind with grief. He knows it is John though, because he reaches out, unseeing, wraps his hands in the scratchy Christmas sweater and uses it to drag John—not-John—whatever he is—close enough that he is able to lower his forehead to that sweater-swathed shoulder. There is a clawing, desperate moment where he needs the contact more than he needs the air he still cannot get. He used to have these episodes when he was a child, stand-offish and already aware how different he was from other people, a quick expert on loneliness. But back then the moments came and went like flitting birds. This time it does not pass. It digs at him, as acute and real as the pain in his lungs. John lets him stay like this, his warm, not-real hands on the back of Sherlock’s neck, making unintelligible comforting sounds.

“I can’t—I can’t—”

His voice returns in nonsensical stutters.

“It’s all right,” says John, “it’s all right. Sherlock. Sherlock, look at me.”

Sherlock cannot lift his head. It weighs too much. But he doesn’t have to; gentle hands lift his chin and hold his gaze until his sobs turn to hiccoughs.

“I couldn’t save you,” says Sherlock, “I couldn’t even keep you safe. After everything, I couldn’t even do that.”

John shakes his head. As Sherlock’s vision returns, he can see that his friend looks inexpressibly sad.

“You couldn’t have done,” he says. “No one could have. There was too much up to chance, and I’d used all of my get out of jail free cards. It was just time.”

“I shouldn’t have dragged you to the fen. I should have known sooner that something was wrong.”

“Too many variables, Sherlock. You’re good, but not psychic.”

“Then it should have been me.”

John shakes his head again, more slowly. “Oh Sherlock,” he says, “no. The world still needs you, you strange man.”

“But _I_ need _you_ ,” Sherlock gasps.

It is the first time he has been able to say the words aloud. John is not just dead, John is dead and _needed_ , the space he has vacated like a vacuum, intent on obliterating the heart Sherlock has only just begun to grow.

“I wish—God, Sherlock, I wish it could be different,” says John. “But you have to know, this wasn’t your fault. You _have_ to know that. _I_ am the doctor, and I didn’t catch it. Why are you killing yourself because you didn’t?”

“Because I hate myself,” Sherlock says. “Because I hate how selfish I am. And I hate that I can’t stop thinking how I wish I never met you, because then maybe I wouldn’t have become the worst thing that ever happened to you. You would still be alive.”

John lets out a shaking breath. “I wasn’t alive,” he says. “Not really. Not before I met you. I meant what I said at the graveyard, after your funeral. I was…utterly alone before I met you. You saved me, Sherlock, in more ways than you could know. And I’m glad that I died saving you, in whatever roundabout way I did.”

“You think that makes it worth it?” Sherlock snarls, drawing back. The idea that his own life could be worth more than John’s is repulsive; he releases the sweater.

“Well, yeah. I do.”

Both of them go still, Sherlock staring into John’s strained face, John staring into Sherlock’s red and swollen one. There is a drawn-out moment of silence, filled only by the hum of the still-open fridge.

“I should have returned the favor,” says Sherlock.

Before John can reply, there is a knock at the door. Sherlock recognizes the tone of that officious rap, done with the business end of an umbrella, and he jumps to his feet.

“Mycroft,” he says. But when he turns to see how John will react, he has disappeared.

***

It is Wednesday evening, one week after the initial infection, and Sherlock is standing in the dark, waiting. He is at the very center of the flat, trying to imagine himself as the nucleus of the little cell that is his life here with John, but he can’t do it. He has never been the life force of this weird ecosystem, no matter what impression others have taken from it. The real nucleus is dying, the cell with it.

Sherlock doesn’t react when Mycroft walks into the flat, though he is a little irked that his brother had no trouble with the lock. He has been waiting for someone—something—ever since he left the hospital. He wonders who got hold of Mycroft, and how. He has done his best to keep his brother out of it, not because he hates him (no matter how much he professes to the contrary), but because the peculiar love the two share has no place in the hot anguish he has been steeling himself against for nearly three days. But he knows in all likelihood Mycroft has known from the beginning. Perhaps he was waiting for Sherlock to come to him. The fact that he is here now does not speak well to the situation.

“Sherlock,” Mycroft says, his silhouette appearing in the doorway. “Why are you standing in the dark?”

And before Sherlock can object, he flicks the lights on.

Sherlock throws a hand up to guard his eyes and turns to squint at Mycroft.

“You’re late to the game, Mycroft,” he says. “You might have been useful a week ago.”

Mycroft raises an eyebrow. “Finally admitting my own deductive skills outweigh your own? You must be stretched thin, brother.”

Sherlock fails to keep the hurt from his face, and Mycroft’s own twists with discomfort when he sees it.

“That was unkind,” he says. “Forgive me.”

“Who sent you?” says Sherlock.

“Detective Lestrade informed the hospital that I might be useful in contacting you. They were the ones to ring directly. Your friends have been trying to reach your mobile.”

“I’ve had it off.”

“You’ve been needed, Sherlock.”

Sherlock’s whole body turns to stone. He has been preparing for this moment since he left the hospital, but now that it has arrived he has the insane urge to attack Mycroft to stop him from speaking, to throw him down the stairs and out the front door. He can replace the locks to keep him out.

“The hospital has declared Doctor Watson brain-dead,” says Mycroft, never one to ease the bandage off. “They need your permission to disconnect his life support.”

Sherlock spends just a moment wishing that this blankness inside of him did not feel so very sharp, then arranges his face into something resembling composure and looks out the window.

“You’ve brought the paperwork.”

“I thought you might like to go to the hospital, to be there when—”

“Brain-dead is dead,” Sherlock says. “He won’t know if I’m there.”

“It isn’t for him, Sherlock.”

Sherlock reaches his hand out without looking at Mycroft. “I know you have the papers, I can see them in your pocket.”

Mycroft sighs, shuffles forward, and produces the papers. Sherlock stalks over to the desk and signs them without reading them.

_Do you read anything before you sign it?_

_Shut up, John._

He thrusts the papers back at Mycroft.

“I trust they’ll take your word that the signature is mine.”

“Yes, I imagine so.”

_You’re going to regret this, you know. You like to pretend you’re immune to emotion, but I know you better than that._

_Shut up, John._

“Fine. Get out of my flat.”

Mycroft tucks the papers into his coat and turns away, pausing at the door.

“I’ll check on you in the morning. If you’d like I can help make…arrangements.”

“As if I could stop you.”

_Don’t push everyone away. You deserve better than that._

_Shut_ up _, John._

“And Sherlock?”

Sherlock finally turns to meet Mycroft’s eye.

“I am…terribly sorry for your loss.”

And he walks out, leaving Sherlock standing at the center of a suddenly empty room.

***


End file.
